K. 640

Solos for Violin (lost), K. 640

ヴォルフガング・アマデウス・モーツァルト作

Portrait of Mozart aged 13 in Verona, 1770
Mozart aged 13 at the keyboard in Verona, 1770

Mozart’s Solos for violin (K. 640) is a lost, probably doubtful work associated with his childhood years, tentatively dated to 1766 (with a wider range extending into October 1768). No score survives, and neither key nor musical content can be securely described.

Mozart's Life at the Time

In 1766, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was ten years old and newly returned from the long Western European tour he had undertaken with his family in 1763–1766. In the years immediately after that journey, the Mozarts’ travels and copying/arranging routines could blur the line between original composition, study pieces, and repertory acquired from others—one reason Solos for violin is often treated cautiously in terms of authenticity.[1][2]

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Musical Character

Because K. 640 is lost (no surviving manuscript or early printed text is known), the work’s key, length, number of movements, and even its precise scoring beyond “violin” cannot be verified from musical evidence.[1] Still, the title suggests pieces intended to display a young player’s command of singing tone, basic passagework, and simple dance-like articulation—skills Mozart was cultivating in the mid-1760s as he absorbed contemporary idioms at close range. Beyond that broad inference, any description of themes, form, or technique would be speculative and is best left unstated.

[1] Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Köchel Catalogue Online: KV 640 — “Solos for violin” (status, dating, transmission).

[2] Wikipedia: overview of spurious/doubtful Mozart works and common causes of misattribution (context for cautious attribution of lost early works).